It would be wonderful if city planning in Sofia could strike out on a unique, radical path creating a phoenix of a capital suitable for third millennium urban living.

He is a phoenix rising from mediocrity, an actor in perpetual renaissance.

Origen

From Old Frenchfenix, via Latin from Greekphoinix 'Phoenician, reddish purple, or phoenix'. The relationship between the Greek senses is obscure: it could not be ‘the Phoenician bird’ because the legend centres on the temple at Heliopolis in Egypt, where the phoenix is said to have burnt itself on the altar. Perhaps the basic sense is 'purple', symbolic of fire and possibly the primary sense of Phoenicia as the purple land (or land of the sunrise).